Accessible Web Sites!

PoochMike · Joined: 21 Mar 2006 Posts: 6 Location: Vancouver, BC Canada

If you are just starting out and looking for a web designer, please ask that your site be designed with CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). This will make your site load and run faster, but more importantly, a lot of visually impaired people will be able to read your site, either because the site is adaptable for font size, or because the site is easier to run through screen reader software.

A huge segment of the population is in this position, and in my mind, a customer is a customer. Designing for the visually impaired may just give you another edge.

We are in the process of finishing up our site and soon everything will be run by CSS.

Cheers!

Rosalind Gardner · Posted: Mon Sep 11, 2006 1:04 pm Post subject:

Hey Mike,

I couldn't agree more! I love CSS and use it on all my sites. Just one quick change to the style sheet and the whole look changes.

Especially appreciate your point about the visually impaired... something I plan to talk about at my presentation at the Casino Affiliate Conference this week. Smile

Cheers,
Ros

Greg · Joined: 01 Mar 2006 Posts: 7

I saw this over the weekend...

"Court rules Target must make website accessible to the blind"

Here is the article

I know we should think about these things when building our sites, but what is the standard? Just how far do we need to go to be handy cap compliant?

Since I'm a small fry, I'm not worried, (not that I don't care, and will do what I can) but what about you Super Affiliate's

I'm sure that this new precedent will start a new wave of lawsuits, and these tend to go were the money is...

Greg

PoochMike · Joined: 21 Mar 2006 Posts: 6 Location: Vancouver, BC Canada

Greg,

The W3C is one of the organizations working on setting standards as is "The Web Standards Project". The W3C has the validation pages for CSS and XHMTL mark up.

I'll give you an example to help explain what is really a very simple problem. As owners of our sites we have a vested interest on how we want our site to appear, particularly as it relates to "the marketing experience". Visually impaired people just want to be able to read the page first and foremost, otherwise there is "no experience" for them at all.

Designing a web page that uses percentages for font size (62.5% is approximately 12 pixels) means that a visually impaired user can press CTRL + and increase the font size to any size that helps them see the words on the screen. This one change in your CSS style sheets means one aspect of your site is accessible. Easy, huh?

Of course there's lots more that one can do, but I'll leave that up to you as to how much you want change your site. The point I am trying to make, is that a simple change can bring us customers from where we least expect them, so let's not ignore them, let's go out and get 'em!

Cheers,